Mother Goose is so blessed to have kids who like to help her out in the kitchen — there is no funner time than cooking with the young tater tots! This past weekend, Joe found a recipe for soft pretzels at Food.com that could be easily whipped up in the bread machine. And so we all dived in together!
We loaded up the bread machine and let it do its thing for an hour and twenty minutes. It is so nice for Mother Goose to have automation at this time — all that mixing and stirring and kneading and muscle-ing. Let’s just leave that to the young gals, right?
And there we were with the most amazing dough I have ever seen in the whole entire world. As we rolled it between our hands, it stretched perfectly and never once stuck to our hands or fingers. We commented over and over about the wonderful dough — I still haven’t gotten over the great texture of that soft pretzel dough!
A little shout out to King Arthur flour...
We formed and twisted the ropes into the proper shape and laid them carefully on the cookie sheet to rest and rise for awhile.
Aren't they so cute?
Meanwhile, Mother Goose got a nice big pot of water boiling on the stove. (Seems that most of my recipes call for a nice big pot of boiling water….) We gently dropped the pretzels into the boiling water, tenderly flipped them and removed them from their bath. I think this is a crucial step in the preparation of the soft pretzel, so do use care. And also do use the baking soda in the water. For some reason, that really helps hold the dough in place instead of dissolving the pretzels. Omigosh, we would have been crying our eyes out if our pretzels had dissolved in the boiling water….
And be sure to brush them with egg white or melted butter, and please sprinkle some stuff on them. We made some salty and some with parmie cheese.
Pop them in the oven and sit down to smell the baking pretzels. WOW, were they tasty! And they disappeared so quickly! Mother Goose just can’t get over the dough — so easy to handle. Have some fun with some kids today or tomorrow or this weekend — they’ll love you for it.
Kinda of pale, but very delicious...
Here’s the recipe!
Ingredients for making 8 pretzels (except we actually got 13 out of this batch!)
1 (1/4 ounce) package dry active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
3 cups flour
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 egg white, slightly beaten
coarse salt
butter
Directions:
1 Place ingredients in bread machine pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer.
2 Select Dough setting.
3 After the machine has completed its mission, it will beep.
4 Remove the dough onto a very lightly floured surface.
5 Divide into 4 parts.
6 Divide each fourth into 3 pieces.
7 Roll each piece into an 18 inch rope.
8 Shape rope into a circle, overlapping about 4 inches; from each end, leaving ends free.
9 Take one end in each hand and twist at the point where dough overlaps.
10 Carefully lift ends across to the opposite edge of circle.
11 Tuck ends under edge to make a pretzel shape; moisten and press ends to seal.
12 Place on greased cookie sheet.
13 Let rise, uncovered, until puffy, about 20 minutes.
14 In a 3-quart saucepan, combine 2 quarts of water and 1/3 cup baking soda; bring to a boil.
15 Lower 1 or 2 pretzels into the saucepan; simmer for 10 seconds on each side.
16 Lift from water with a slotted spoon.
17 Return to greased cookie sheet.
18 Let dry briefly.
19 Brush with 1 egg white slightly beaten.
20 Sprinkle with course salt or sesame seeds or leave plain.
21 If you leave them plain, after they bake dip into melted butter then in cinnamon and sugar mixture.
22 Bake at 425°F for 4 minutes; then turn cookie sheet around and bake 4 more minutes.
23 These are so good.
Mother Goose Smiles 